Adapting Sunset Song: Authorial, Industrial and National Discourses in the 2015 film adaptation of Sunset Song

Abstract

This article traces the discourses shaping the 2015 film adaptation of Sunset Song, directed by Terence Davies. In doing so it shows how the film, and Gibbon’s original novel, are involved in complex negotiations of ideas about Scottishness. In the case of the film, this can be seen through a sophisticated and poetic visual engagement with some aspects of the novel’s characterisation of Chris Guthrie, its use of language and its representation of landscapes. But it can also be seen in paratextual materials which demonstrate the route taken by the producers and director in negotiating the fraught economic terrain of feature length filmmaking in Scotland, both in terms of its funding applications to national funder creative Scotland, and the way it mobilised particular discourses of art-house and auteur cinema in its marketing and production materials. Finally, through a close look at the emphasis on militarism, femininity and landscape in the film text, the article considers how the film performs a kind of Scotland that is both amenable to the tastes of the filmmaker, desires of the public funder and the art-house, film festival circuit where it will primarily be consumed.